A Florida man’s hankering for feral pig landed him in the hospital. In a recent case report, doctors describe how the man likely contracted a serious and rare infection from swine meat he received from a hunter.
Scientists and health officials in Florida detailed the porcine mishap this month in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The man endured multiple trips to the hospital and needed his chest implant removed before doctors identified what was making him sick: pig-derived bacteria called Brucella suis. Fortunately, once the bacteria was found, the man was successfully treated with the right mix of antibiotics.
According to the report, the man was a pastor in his 70s who had a history of heart failure—a condition that necessitated an automated implantable cardiac defibrillator (AICD) device to keep his heartbeat steady. Starting in spring 2019, he developed chest issues that led to multiple hospital stays. His doctors at the time determined that some sort of infection had taken root in his device, but initial tests failed to find any suspects.
The man underwent multiple antibiotic treatments but stopped due to the side effects. After stopping the antibiotics, he seemed fine for a few months, but once again visited a hospital in Alabama with left chest discomfort and fever. He then went for a follow-up visit at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Florida in the fall of 2020, which was where doctors decided to remove his implant and finally nabbed the culprit behind his infection.
B. suis is one of several bacteria that cause the zoonotic disease brucellosis (zoonotic meaning they’re primarily spread from animals to humans). Four species are known to sicken people, and infections are usually caught from drinking raw milk and cheese or from direct exposure to infected animals. The man lived on a farm with plenty of potential animal vectors, but he reported never coming into contact with them nor was he a hunter.
He did recall, however, that he was gifted feral pig meat from a local hunter on several occasions in 2017—meat that he handled with his bare hands before cooking and eating it. While other possibilities exist, the doctors believe this gift “likely served as his exposure to B. suis.”
Brucellosis is no joke. These bacteria were once formally designated as potential bioterror threats, since they can be easily aerosolized, which then makes them very contagious (they were recently removed from this list to make research into them easier). The infection can also be difficult to identify with conventional tests, and it can cause chronic, debilitating symptoms like arthritis and heart inflammation if left untreated (unlike many other bacteria, these germs can make themselves cozy inside our cells). Indeed, the man’s infection was misidentified as a different bacteria prior to his last hospital visit.
The man underwent surgery to remove his implant, which could have potentially exposed the infection to his medical care team. Fortunately, the risk of aerosolization was low, proper precautions appeared to have been followed, and no other cases among staff were found.
As for the man himself, he was given the standard antibiotic treatment for brucellosis, which seemed to work. Four months after his tainted implant was removed, a new one was placed. And three years later, he had no signs of an active infection.
Brucellosis is very rare in the U.S., with only around 100 cases reported annually, most of which are from other species besides B. suis. But feral pigs are a persistent and growing presence in parts of the U.S., Florida included. And the authors say that hunters and anyone else who loves feral pig meat should be made well aware of the potential danger.
“Feral swine hunters are at risk of contracting B. suis, and measures to reduce that risk include the use of personal protective equipment and thoroughly cooking animal products before consumption,” they wrote.
